Keith Miller, ASA Member
Kansas State University
Manhattan, KS 66506-3201

From: PSCF 48 (March
1996): 66-68.

This letter is in response to the recent article (PSCF,
Sept. 95) by Robert Newman entitled "Scientific and religious aspects of
the origins debate." I was very disappointed with the sweeping, and
inaccurate, generalizations made concerning "theistic evolution," a
term which I assume is meant to include all those who accept evolution as a
persuasive scientific account of origins. The article also repeats statements
about evolutionary theory and the fossil record commonly encountered in
popularized Christian writing, but that are wholly without support from the
scientific literature.

I will first address some of the theological and exegetical
questions raised. On page 172 Newman states that theistic evolution "

sees the account of the creation of humans in Genesis 2 as parabolic
(fictitious history)... " This statement
would seem to imply that anything but a literalistic reading of a scriptural
passage is deemed somehow less true and is tagged with the pejorative term
"fictitious history." Scripture is rich with many types of literary
styles influenced by many different cultures and writers. The challenge of
scriptural exegesis is to recognize the type of literature being employed and
its theological intent. The superficiality of the exegesis employed by Newman is
also reflected in his comment on page 170. To the claim that Adam was created by
evolution from a hominid ancestor, Newman responds "If so, why did the
Genesis account not make this clearer?" Scripture doesn't make many things
clear! It also doesn't make clear that the history of the Earth spans billions
of years, a position which Newman appears to accept. Such issues were simply
foreign to the people of the time, and irrelevant to the purposes of the
passage. The scriptural image of the creation of Adam from the dust of the Earth
communicates quite effectively that our beginnings are rooted in the Earth. We
are made of the same stuff as all of life, and thus are inseparably part of the
rest of creation. It is an accurate, powerful, and theologically rich image.

It disturbs me that the author's critique of evolution seems
to be driven by a fear that the questioning of widely held evangelical positions
will "draw many young Christians into various forms of theological
liberalism" (page 166). Because a particular idea raises doubts among some
evangelical Christians, does that make it wrong? As Christians we believe that
God is the God of truth, and that truth most certainly does not correspond in
all particulars with what any group of believers accepts as true. There is much
in scripture that is hard to comprehend and to integrate into an easily grasped
picture of the nature of God and his interaction with the created universe and
us, his image-bearers. The complexity, contradiction, and mystery present in
both scripture and nature confirm for me the truth and reality of the Christian
faith. A picture of God and nature that was not "bigger" than me, and
that did not cause me to doubt and question, would not have the ring of reality,
but of a human invention.

Newman repeats several widely held misunderstandings of
evolution and the fossil record. He makes the completely unfounded assertion
that there are absolute limits to evolutionary change. The anatomy and genetic
composition of a given species imposes constraints on possible directions of
morphologic change (at least in the near term) but not on the ultimate magnitude
of change. I challenge Dr. Newman to provide a single example from the
scientific literature in which an absolute fixed limit of morphological change
has been demonstrated. He also perpetuates misunderstandings of the evolutionary
theory of punctuated equilibrium.

This model of evolutionary rate extends the theory of
allopatric speciation in isolated populations to the fossil record. It proposes
that most evolutionary change is associated with the speciation process.
Contrary to Newman's claim (page 168), it is completely consistent with
population genetics and natural selection. This theory in no way denies the
existence of intermediate forms or of the occurrence of gradual transitions
between species in some lineages.

As a paleontologist, I find Newman's statement that "...the fossil record is characterized by gaps between all the major
biological types... " (page 169)
particularly egregious. This claim is categorically false! The fossil record
contains many examples of organisms with intermediate morphologies, as well as
fossil series of transitional species or genera that cross family, order, and
class boundaries. Intermediates are now known between many high-level vertebrate
taxonomic groups. A few of the more well-known examples include: the transition
from reptiles to mammals,1 from amphibians to
reptiles,2 from fish to
amphibians,3 and the recently discovered
"walking whales" that bridge the transition from mesonychids to fully
marine whales.4 For those with access to the
internet, a visit to the Talk.Origins Archive) will provide many
other vertebrate examples.

Lastly, the comment that "..virtually all the phyla appear suddenly at the Cambrian
`explosion'... " (page 169) is not a
statement of fact but a highly speculative, and I believe incorrect,
interpretation of the fossil record. Actually, without significant
qualification, it is demonstrably false. Many animal phyla including several
living ones appear as fossils in the Late Precambrian. The Ediacaran (~580-560
My) was dominated by solitary and colonial coelenterates that may have included
all four living cnidarian classes5 (Conway Morris,
1993). Also important in these ancient communities were burrowing and
trail-making worms that may have included annelids, priapulids and
palaeoscolecid worms.6 There is also evidence for
the presence of arthropods as well as echinoderms before the beginning of the
Cambrian.7 Furthermore, many of the organisms that
did appear in the Cambrian possess morphologies that bear similarities to more
than one phylum. This is, they are intermediates. For example, the Early
Cambrian caterpillar-like lobopods occupy a transitional morphological position
between several living phyla,8 and have
morphological features in common with the
arthropods.9 Similarly, a very important group of
Cambrian slug-like animals bearing tiny cap-shaped and scale-like skeletal
elements are mosaics of phylum-level characteristics, having similarities with
both the mollusks and the polychaete annelid
worms.10

Those who would critique evolutionary theory and
"theistic evolution" should have at least as good a grasp of the
arguments and evidence as the advocates of those positions. To do less invites
those criticisms to be ignored or scorned.